China's Policy Towards Social Media and the Internet

Discussion

Consilience Project:

"The success of today’s social media companies depends on their ability to influence the behavior of large numbers of people through mass data collection, centralized algorithmic control, and stewardship of enormous networks of users. This does not entail duplicating all the functions of the state—tech companies have little interest in operating sanitation services or maintaining standing armies—but it does entail large-scale coordination of behavior, meaning-making, and political education.[4] This ability to alter behavior comes at the direct expense of existing systems of social influence, such as traditional media, scientific debate, or even government itself. Older institutions are displaced as users have more and more of their information environment shaped by social media platforms, which continue to pursue their own narrow interests.

This dynamic is recognized in China, where the party-state has cracked down on tech companies.[5] In the West, however, governments have not understood the full scope of the problem, let alone responded adequately. Social media companies have privatized the public sphere, driving polarization at the cost of shared sensemaking, all in service of greater engagement and control. Since a democracy rests on shared sensemaking among the demos (“the people”), this risks hollowing out the democracy itself. Already, polarization has filtered upwards from the electorate to the elected representatives, leading to ever more gridlock and infighting. Western governments have been reactive and inconsistent in response, trying and failing to police “misinformation” on social media platforms and at the same time co-opt them to use against partisan rivals. Around the world, most governments have failed to target or even perceive the fundamental causes of the problem.

...

The fundamental dynamic of tech companies usurping governance authority has not been widely understood yet in the open societies of the world, but it does appear to have been understood in China. Since November 2020, the Chinese government has stepped up a widespread crackdown on China’s tech industry, starting with the suspension of the record-setting initial public offering (IPO) for the financial technology company Ant Group.[19] Shortly after, an antitrust investigation was launched into Ant Group’s parent company, Alibaba Group. In April 2021, Ant Group announced that, rather than going public, it would become a holding company overseen by China’s central bank.[20] Throughout 2021, the Chinese government issued new guidelines to tech companies restricting monopolistic behavior and passed data protection laws that, among other things, banned tech companies from collecting user data that is unnecessary to the provision of services without the user’s consent.

Notably, the Chinese government’s crackdown didn’t target a specific subset of tech companies for their narrow effects on wider society, in the way that, for example, many jurisdictions have sought to limit the effects of Uber. Instead, the Chinese government targeted the core mechanisms that underpin the success of tech companies as centralizing competitors for governance: mass collection of user data, the maximization of user engagement, and monopolistic business practices that defend their positions as unmatched data hoarders. China’s biggest social media app, WeChat, as well as China’s Uber, Didi, both temporarily suspended new user registrations in July 2021 in response to regulatory inquiries.[21][22] In the same month, WeChat’s parent company Tencent announced it would implement facial recognition checks to ensure compliance with regulations banning minors from playing online games between 10:00 p.m. and 8:00 a.m.[23]

China’s recent crackdown on its domestic tech industry is instructive, but China would not have had a domestic tech industry to crack down on in the first place if the government had not been long wary of the potentially destabilizing impact of the internet. The Chinese government has issued regulations concerning internet usage dating back to the 1990s. The combination of China’s “Great Firewall” policy of heavy online censorship, banning foreign tech companies, and requiring compliance with Chinese internet regulation has resoundingly succeeded in preventing non-Chinese tech companies from collecting the data of Chinese users, let alone establishing a market presence in the country. Early internet observers both predicted and hoped that the internet would lead to political upheaval in China; instead, the Chinese government co-opted the new technology and used it to fortify its own system of control. The open societies of the West, instead, have experienced the full brunt of internet-enabled social upheaval."

(https://consilienceproject.org/how-big-tech-is-reshaping-governance/)

More information

"China’s tech tycoons lose $87bn of wealth after Beijing crackdown”, Financial Times, August 8, 2021, https://www.ft.com/content/7e6f9a08-37be-4ab3-ae15-953533ab33b5. ↩

Arjun Kharpal, “China’s regulatory crackdown has wiped billions off tech stocks — here are the risks ahead,” CNBC, August 30, 2021, https://www.cnbc.com/2021/08/30/china-tech-crackdown-experts-warn-on-the-risks-ahead-for-stocks.html. ↩

Jing Yang, “Jack Ma’s Ant Group Bows to Beijing With Company Overhaul,” The Wall Street Journal, April 12, 2021, https://www.wsj.com/articles/ant-group-to-become-a-financial-holding-company-overseen-by-central-bank-11618223482. ↩

Jeremy Bowman and Brian Withers, “How Tencent Is Managing China’s New Regulatory Environment,” The Motley Fool, September 5, 2021, https://www.fool.com/investing/2021/09/05/how-tencent-is-managing-chinas-new-regulatory-envi/. ↩

Jessica Bursztynsky and Steve Kovach, “Didi shares fall after China announces cybersecurity review just days after IPO,” CNBC, July 2, 2021, https://www.cnbc.com/2021/07/02/didi-shares-fall-after-china-announces-cybersecurity-review.html. ↩

Arjun Kharpal, “Chinese tech giants look to make business changes in a bid to preempt regulators,” CNBC, July 15, 2021, https://www.cnbc.com/2021/07/15/chinese-tech-giants-look-preempt-regulators-with-business-changes.html. ↩